The $XRP ETF market continues to grow steadily, but it has yet to join the "big league" of billion-dollar crypto funds. The debate over the actual figures was sparked by a major Solana milestone: this week, Bitwise's Solana Staking ETF (BSOL) officially reached $1 billion in assets under management, exactly 10 months after its launch.

Much of the capital flowing into the product has been driven by its built-in annual yield of roughly 5.8%, generated through staking directly inside the regulated ETF. That structural advantage matters in the current market: U.S. regulators began permitting staking within registered crypto ETFs in 2025, allowing issuers to pass rewards through to shareholders, and yield-bearing products have since ranked among the fastest-growing crypto funds by inflows.

Commenting on the achievement on X, Bitwise CEO Hunter Horsley pointed out that only Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana ETFs have so far crossed the $1 billion mark. When a commenter suggested the statistic looked biased against $XRP, Horsley replied directly: "I'm not! There's no $1B $XRP ETF yet!"

Solana Ethereum Bitcoin The only 3 crypto assets in the world with ETFs that have grown to $1B+ so far. — Hunter Horsley (@HHorsley) August 30, 2026

Why Solana Succeeded While XRP Has Not

Horsley's remark highlighted a fundamental technological barrier for $XRP. Unlike Solana, the XRP Ledger has no native staking at all. All $XRP tokens were issued upfront, and the blockchain cannot generate new tokens to pay staking rewards. This puts XRP in a different position from other assets vying for ETF attention: the constraint is not regulatory but architectural, rooted in how the ledger itself was designed.

The only future alternative for funds could be the native XRPL Lending Protocol, which is currently undergoing a validator vote. If activated, the protocol would introduce on-ledger lending functionality that issuers could potentially tap for yield generation. For now, however, the $XRP ETF sector is forced to rely exclusively on pure spot demand.

Investor demand remains undeniably strong. U.S. spot $XRP ETFs have collectively accumulated $1.44 billion in net assets, with cumulative inflows reaching $1.66 billion, according to SoSoValue. In terms of total capital, the $XRP sector already operates at the level of the market leaders. However, because these products offer no yield, no individual fund has managed to reach the $1 billion mark.

Horsley's own fund leads the segment. The Bitwise $XRP ETF controls 44% of the market with $632.03 million in assets. Its closest competitors trail behind: Franklin Templeton's XRPZ holds $411.39 million, while Canary's WAXRP has $234.36 million. The remaining share is split among products from 21Shares and Grayscale.

With the latest Form 13F filings confirming an influx of U.S. institutional investors into crypto ETFs, Bitwise's standalone $XRP fund would need to attract roughly another $368 million in net assets to reach the coveted $1 billion threshold. The 13F disclosures, which reveal institutional equity holdings on a quarterly basis, have become a closely watched signal of how pensions, hedge funds, and wealth managers are allocating to crypto ETFs.

Solana's experience has shown that pure spot exposure trails staking-backed products in terms of growth speed. XRP's ability to cross the billion-dollar mark will therefore depend entirely on the appetite of long-term investors, and on whether the XRPL Lending Protocol, if approved, can eventually offer issuers a yield mechanism comparable to staking.